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Trouble scoring - Is it just me?

Hi everyone,

I've been playing with Arsenal and the first game I played lasted one season, I finished 5th and got the sack (after doing pretty well most of the season injuries got the better of me) and now I'm playing again and early on it seems to be going pretty much the same way.

My problem is shots to goals. In my last match I drew 0-0 at home to QPR after having 27 shots, 6 on target.

This isn't isolated and I seem to always have to rely on defence (risky thing to do with Arsenal!) since I usually only score once or twice a game despite dominating.

Is this just me? At the moment I'm feeling tempted to go back to FM2011 just because of how frustrating it is to see players like Van Persie, Arshavin and Hamsik (new signing) blasting the ball over or curling it wide with practically every shot!

Anyone have any ideas or suggestions? I play a pretty attacking 4-2-3-1 with the attacking mentality but still the team is so wasteful

I've been playing with Arsenal and the first game I played lasted one season, I finished 5th and got the sack (after doing pretty well most of the season injuries got the better of me) and now I'm playing again and early on it seems to be going pretty much the same way.

My problem is shots to goals. In my last match I drew 0-0 at home to QPR after having 27 shots, 6 on target.

This isn't isolated and I seem to always have to rely on defence (risky thing to do with Arsenal!) since I usually only score once or twice a game despite dominating.

Is this just me? At the moment I'm feeling tempted to go back to FM2011 just because of how frustrating it is to see players like Van Persie, Arshavin and Hamsik (new signing) blasting the ball over or curling it wide with practically every shot!

Anyone have any ideas or suggestions? I play a pretty attacking 4-2-3-1 with the attacking mentality but still the team is so wasteful

Attacking mentality causes the players to be more wasteful, not less. 27/6 in chances is extremely poor, so poor in fact that I doubt that any one of those shots were even a good chance. In order to create better chances you need to play a slow, patient attacking game looking for that one opening in the opposition defense to appear. Try to create between 10 and 15 shots, and at least half of them on goal. Any more than that and that's a sign that you are rushing forward shooting from bad angles and too early etc.

I think the problem is like what everyone has said, it's most likely your team shoot to many long shots. (My own personal preference if my team taken about half their shots as a long shot, it's time to use that 'work ball into the box' instruction!). Long shots are usually a terrible waste of possessions so for most players I took the sliders to the min. Even players with very high long shot I still only use the mid slider, and usually only the CM/AM or Wing Back (My WB rarely shoot even if they're in shooting range and if they do it have a higher chance to get into the goal than if my CM attempted it for some reason).

Also "stand off opponents" instruction can be useful against the lesser team that likes to play defensively against your team, it allows their player to spread out more and if your team can get a fast counter your player will usually find space to run into. Of course there's risk as this instruction will also give your opponent more space , gotta risk a goal to create a higher chance to make one right

Certain tactics will create more shooting chances than others, but this doesn't mean necessarily that this will lead to more goals. There are two schools of thought on this (both might be valid): either some tactics create lots of shooting chances, but very few good chances so you see the sort of stats you describe with 20+ shots and less than 25% on target, or some tactics create an unrealistic number of chances so the ME prevents crazy scores by making your strikers much less accurate. Last night I played about 8 games, some with a 4-5-1 with a flat midfield and some with a 4-4-2. The 4-5-1 was great (as you would hope) against big clubs like Man Utd and Spurs (I'm Birmingham), but against Watford I had something like 23 shots to 2, but only got 6 on target and drew 1-1 - I also lost 3-2 at West Ham due to horrendous defensive errors and some more poor finishing. When I went back to 4-4-2 (my usual formation) I beat West Brom and Burnley comfortably despite having far fewer shots than I'd had against West Ham and Watford who were very similar sides in terms of quality. I would like to think that it's because the 4-5-1 doesn't create as many good chances with only 1 striker covered by two DCs, but it's easy to get the impression from the highlights that the ME tries to stop you scoring if you create too many chances. I know this was certainly what people were suggesting with 1-on-1s in FM09 or FM10.